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Americans: healthcare please

US government: Sorry did you say more war ships in the South China Sea?

Americans: no, healthcare

US government: Alright, you drive a hard bargain. Here are more war ships in the South China Sea.

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Hi I’m Sleazy McPundit with WMD News. To explain why more internet censorship is needed to fight disinformation, here’s a panel of millionaires who are paid to lie to you.

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Biden in 2020 is just Obama in 2008 if you aged him 30 years, made him white, and replaced all the hope and change talk with “Fuck you. No.”

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Biden’s presidency looks set to be worse than Obama’s in every way. There will be a backlash against this. It is absolutely imperative that the US left fight like never before to make sure it’s more of a leftist backlash than a rightist one, or things will get very ugly. If you don’t take the fight to the libs, the right will. If you don’t seize control of the dominant narrative, the right will. This is 100 percent guaranteed. You need to start dealing with this now unless you want something far uglier than Trump down the road in the near term.

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The longer they can keep you fixated on Trump’s impotent post-election tantrum the longer they can keep you from noticing the incoming administration full of warmongers, corporate cronies and authoritarians currently setting up shop under the next president.

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A full withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan would have been something. A partial withdrawal is just PR. If you’re not making it difficult to simply put the troops back when you’re gone, you’re not doing anything.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bring Them Home for Christmas

November 14, 2020

Bring Them Home for Christmas

Pablo Picasso Dans l’atelier 1954

“There is nothing in Afghanistan worth the life of a single American soldier.”
– Douglas Macgregor

I’m having a bit of a problem finding the right format for this essay. I want to highlight a whole number of quotes, but I also would like you to read the original setting they came from. Please bear with me.

CNN: “A Pentagon spokesman confirmed Wednesday that retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor “will be serving as a Senior Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense. Mr. MacGregor’s decades of military experience will be used to assist in the continued implementation of the President’s national security priorities.”

Also CNN: “Macgregor once advocated for the use of lethal force against unarmed migrants [..] and has made a litany of racist comments.”

I must admit even my encyclopedic brain had never heard of Macgregor, and I’m sure most of you hadn’t either, but I’m taking a liking to the man. “The use of lethal force against unarmed migrants” sounds bogus off the bat, that’s “Putin eats babies” territory, and accusing someone of “a litany of racist comments” without naming even one, doesn’t do it for me either.

And even then. The man wants to bring US troops home. Oh wait, but that’s why you accuse him of all these unsubstantiated “facts”. Gotcha. What I do know is for instance this Nov 6 2019 interview Macgregor did with Tucker Carlson, in which he sounds like a reasonable yet worried man. And while opinions may differ on how big of a threat drug cartels may be to the US, his view appears to have its merit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘The Emails Are Russian’ Will Be The Narrative, Regardless Of Facts Or Evidence

October 19, 2020

‘The Emails Are Russian’ Will Be The Narrative, Regardless Of Facts Or Evidence

Fight it all you want, but there’s nothing you can do. “The emails are Russian” is going to be the official dominant narrative in mainstream political discourse, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Resistance is futile.

Like the Russian hacking narrative, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian bounties in Afghanistan narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that simultaneously advances pre-planned cold war agendas, is politically convenient for the Democratic party and generates clicks and ratings, the narrative that the New York Post publication of Hunter Biden’s emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus. This will happen regardless of facts and evidence, up to and including rock solid evidence that Hunter Biden’s emails were not published as a result of a Russian operation.

This is happening. It’s following the same formula all the other fact-free Russia hysteria narratives have followed. The same media tour by pundits and political operatives saying with no evidence but very assertive voices that Russia is most certainly behind this occurrence and we should all be very upset about it.

“To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work,” Russiagate founder and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is heard assuring CNN’s audience.

“Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda,” begins and eight-part thread by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who claims the emails are “Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.”

“It’s not really surprising at all, this was always the play, but still kind of head-spinning to watch all the players from 2016 run exactly the same hack-leak-smear op in 2020. Even with everyone knowing exactly what’s happening this time,” tweets MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Imagine If MSM Consistently Applied The Evidentiary Standards It’s Applying To Hunter Biden’s Emails

October 15, 2020

Imagine If MSM Consistently Applied The Evidentiary Standards It’s Applying To Hunter Biden’s Emails

Mainstream media and social media platforms are actively blacking out an October surprise published by The New York Post which purports to show “smoking gun” emails from the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Both Twitter and Facebook have censored the story on their platforms, the first time we’ve seen the powerful social media giants deplatform a mainstream news media article, both citing concerns about the origins of the emails and an uncertainty about the veracity of the claims.

“Facebook was limiting distribution of the story while its outside fact-checkers reviewed the story’s claims, spokesman Andy Stone said,” reports NPR, adding that “Twitter said it decided to block the story because it couldn’t be sure about the origins of the emails.”

Twitter claims it found the emails to be in violation of its policies banning content which contained private information and its rules against “hacked materials”, both of which would have forbidden all articles sharing the contents of the 2016 WikiLeaks drops if those rules had existed back then. As I warned could happen back in August, these rules have set the stage for the cross-platform censorship of a 2020 October surprise.

There’s a good thread going around Twitter compiling posts that mainstream media reporters have been making in objection to the circulation of Hunter Biden’s emails alongside posts made by those same reporters promoting far more ridiculous and insubstantial allegations, like MSNBC’s virulent Russia conspiracy theorist Kyle Griffin saying nobody should link to the New York Post report because if they do they’ll be “amplifying disinformation”.

A new Reason article discusses how the mass media are not just avoiding the story but actively discouraging it:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

MSM Promotes Yet Another CIA Press Release As News

September 23, 2020

MSM Promotes Yet Another CIA Press Release As News

The Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor, has published yet another anonymously sourced CIA press release disguised as a news report which just so happens to facilitate longstanding CIA foreign policy.

In an article titled “Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden“, WaPo’s virulent neoconservative war pig Josh Rogin describes what was told to him by unnamed sources about the contents of a “secret” CIA document which alleges that Vladimir Putin is “probably” overseeing an interference operation in America’s presidential election.

True to form, at no point does WaPo follow standard journalistic protocol and disclose its blatant financial conflict of interest with the CIA when promoting an unproven CIA narrative which happens to serve the consent-manufacturing agendas of the CIA for its new cold war with Russia.

And somehow in our crazy, propaganda-addled society, this is accepted as “news”.

The CIA has had a hard-on for the collapse of the Russian Federation for many years, and preventing the rise of another multipolar world at all cost has been an open agenda of US imperialism since the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed it is clear that the escalations we’ve been watching unfold against Russia were in fact planned well in advance of 2016, and it is only by propaganda narratives like this one that consent has been manufactured for a new cold war which imperils the life of every organism on this planet.

There is no excuse for a prominent news outlet publishing a CIA press release disguised as news in facilitation of these CIA agendas. It is still more inexcusable to merely publish anonymous assertions about the contents of that CIA press release.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the left is using the coronavirus to make the world a twisted dystopia

September 12, 2020

How the left is using the coronavirus to make the world a twisted dystopia

Today’s bureaucrats and elitists are striving toward the creation of a global, communistic police state.

If you were living in a dystopia, how would you even know it?

The current situation certainly raises the question, as we experience unprecedented restrictions on individual freedom adopted in response to the Chinese coronavirus, coupled with left-wing riots that undermine the legitimacy of America’s core institutions. It’s becoming clear that these social changes are dystopian, not merely because they are harmful and coercive, but because they seek to replace the American way of life with a new social order rooted in utopian visions.

In a January 2019 essay on the overuse of the word “dystopia” in American political discourse, Miami University of Ohio professor Ryan J. Barilleaux wrote that the defining features of an actual dystopia are “social regimentation, dehumanization, abuse of technology, state terror, a new class of rulers, propaganda instead of truth, inevitable totalitarianism, and the tragedy of the individual.”

“When combined, these features sketch the map of dystopia,” wrote Barilleaux.

“Dystopia is what results from the attempt to create utopia,” he explained. “Consider the society of Brave New World, which is horrible precisely to the extent that the World State was designed to be exactly as it is.”

This year’s warp-speed cultural transformation has brought about all of Barilleaux’s hallmarks of a dystopia. The utopia today’s bureaucrats and elitists are striving toward is a global, communistic police state. This police state is sold to ordinary people not as that, but as a safe, virus-free society. Who wouldn’t want that?

Its architects admit that they won’t stop at a vaccine. “We will not, we cannot go back to the way things were,” World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said August 21.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Have You Noticed How Push-Back Against Powell-Fed’s Actions Is Getting Louder in the Mainstream Media, from NPR to CNBC?

September 11, 2020

Have You Noticed How Push-Back Against Powell-Fed’s Actions Is Getting Louder in the Mainstream Media, from NPR to CNBC?

Still a lot of fawning coverage, but big dissenters are now given prominent spots, and loaded questions are used to politely hammer Powell into telling obvious nonsense.

This is an interesting turn of events, in a world of Fed-fawning mainstream media. In one version, the push-back takes the form of loaded questions about asset bubbles and wealth inequality caused by the Fed’s asset purchases.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell then answers, following what looks like a script because these loaded questions are now being thrown at him regularly. He admits that the Fed’s policies have increased asset prices, then says the Fed as a matter of policy doesn’t comment on asset prices, and hence cannot comment on asset bubbles, but then assiduously denies that this increased wealth of the asset holders, which he admits the Fed has engineered, widened the wealth inequality to the majority of Americans who hold no or nearly no assets, and who got shafted by the Fed. It’s like getting pushed on live TV into saying that, yes, indeed, two plus two equals three!

This happened many times, most notably during the July 29 FOMC press conference when a Bloomberg reporter pushed Powell on that (transcript of my podcast on the Fed’s role in wealth inequality); and during the interview with NPR which aired on September 4, when he was pushed on both, asset bubbles and wealth inequality.

In another version, the push-back in the mainstream media takes more accusatory forms expressed with exasperation and dotted with exclamation marks.

In early August, notable push-backers were former president of the New York Fed William Dudley and Bloomberg News which carried and promoted his editorial.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greenwald: MSM Journalists Hate Assange Because He’s Broken More Blockbuster Stories Than All Combined

September 10, 2020

Greenwald: MSM Journalists Hate Assange Because He’s Broken More Blockbuster Stories Than All Combined

“Nonsense!” — Julian Assange shouted as during the second day of his resumed extradition hearing US federal government attorney James Lewis told a witness that the WikiLeaks founder is facing extradition over the publication of informants’ names and not for merely handling leaked documents.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser promptly warned Assange, seated in the dock, that any further outbursts could get him removed from court and the hearings could proceed without him.

“If you interrupt proceedings and disrupt a witness who is properly giving their evidence, it is open to me to continue without you in your absence,” Baraitser said. “This is obviously not something I wish to do. I am, therefore, giving you a clear warning.”

*Julian Assange being held in a glass cage during prior May UK court proceedings, via The Gray Zone.*

The US side is hinging its extradition request argument on its prior claims that WikiLeaks under Assange’s leadership revealed names of sources. These individuals then “disappeared” according to the government’s argument, suggesting Assange actually got US operatives and assets detained or killed in foreign countries.

During the Tuesday proceedings, US wrongdoing was highlighted as well. Reuters reported that:

Stafford Smith, a dual US-UK national, said the leaked information had contributed to court findings that criminal proceedings should be taken against senior U.S. officials.

“I say this more in sadness than anger. I would never have believed that my government would do what it did,” he said. “We are talking about criminal offences of torture, kidnapping, rendition, holding people without trial.”

Meanwhile The Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald blasted the deafening press silence this week as the hearing proceeds.

Greenwald pointed out that years ago “it was fairly accepted in liberal circles (and media ones) that prosecuting Assange would be a grave threat to press freedom.”

But what’s different this time, Greenwald underscores, is that “Now Trump DOJ is doing it, and liberals are silent-to-supportive because Assange hurt Hillary & liberals want him imprisoned for that.”

MSM Is Propaganda: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

August 25, 2020

MSM Is Propaganda: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The US tortures journalists and whistleblowers, arms terrorists, kills children with starvation sanctions, wages endless wars, facilitates mass atrocities in Yemen, repeatedly used nuclear weapons on civilian populations, circles the entire planet with hundreds of military bases and bullies every nation on earth using military and economic force, but yeah we need to let them remain in charge of the world or else an evil government might take over.

You know that person in your life who’s always telling you what you should do despite the fact that their own life is a shambles and nobody likes them and they continuously make bad decisions for themselves? That’s America on the world stage.

Don’t take life advice from miserable people, don’t take creative advice from people who don’t create, don’t join religions that facilitate child rape, don’t join political parties that don’t help the public, don’t give military power to people with a history of bad military decisions.

When it first rose to power with the Bush administration the neoconservative ideology of doing whatever it takes to ensure continued US unipolar hegemony was widely criticized. Now it’s the bipartisan beltway consensus, and if you question it you’re smeared as freakish and suspicious.

Now you never even hear the word neoconservative or neocon anymore in mainstream US discourse. That’s not because it went away, it’s because it became the normalized default mainstream worldview.

Tier 1: Good people.

Tier 2: Okay people.

Tier 3: Bad people.

Tier 4: Diseases and parasites.

Tier 5: Shit.

Tier 6: The shit that would come out of shit if shit could shit.

Tier 7: People who defend acts of police brutality on the internet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Regime Change The Media: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

August 4, 2020

Regime Change The Media: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

America this is serious: if you re-elect Trump, you’ll be trapped in a fascist dystopian oligarchy which will keep robbing you of your rights and wellbeing for the benefit of the powerful and the wealthy.

And it gets even worse: these things will also be true if you elect Biden.

People often ask me for suggestions on how they can learn to understand the world better. Here is a link to an article full of tips on how to punch through the obfuscations of propaganda and make sense of things, and here is a link to a Twitter list of my favorite news-gatherers and dot-connecters which you can bookmark and scroll through daily. Those should get you started.

Mainstream media reporters have a much higher body count than all serial killers and terrorist organizations combined. They do not deserve respect, and their institutions should not exist.

You are infinitely more qualified to report the news than all the scumbags in the mass media who are paid by billionaires to parrot government lies. I mean that 100 percent literally. If you’re not being paid by the wealthy to lie to the public, you are more qualified to report the news than those who are. Doesn’t matter if all you have is a smartphone and a Twitter account; you are set up to be a better news reporter than them.

You know all that space mass media reporters take up in society’s awareness proclaiming what’s true and what’s going on in the world? That’s your space. They usurped it. Take it back from them. The MSM have betrayed humanity to an unforgivable extent. We must become the media.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Media’s Conspiracy Against the People

August 4, 2020

The Media’s Conspiracy Against the People

YouTube moderators, with no medical background to even determine if what is being said true, are censoring doctors who contradict the WHO and Bill Gates. It is totally outrageous how these social media companies are conspiring against the people to censor things they have no expertise in reviewing. This is purely a “policy” decision, which would be hate speech if they promoted that everyone within some race was evil. They removed even Trump’s retweet of the doctors who staged a press conference in front of the Supreme Court. Since this involves the health and welfare of all people, they claim they have a right to impose their own political views. If someone dies because they are refused hydroxychloroquine because of the media, the media should be held responsible.

The media has grossly misrepresented the threat of COVID-19, which clearly shows they are trying desperately to spark a political coup, whereas if the Russians did this, they would demand investigations. On average, Democrats appear to be deeply biased and live in fear of COVID-19, while people aged 55 and older account for 92% of all deaths. Those people aged 44 and younger account for only 2.7% of all deaths. Democrats have been seriously misinformed and overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 for people under the age of 24, assuming it is a 50/50 chance, when the real risk remains people aged 65 and older. Never in the history of the United States has such a misinformation/propaganda campaign been waged against the people by the media.

I reported that my cousin was a front line-nurse in New Jersey. She caught COVID-19 and it passed in a couple of days. But she gave it to her husband who was overweight and had diabetes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Media Continues to Misreport Unemployment: 31.8 Million People on State & Federal Unemployment Insurance. Week 18 of U.S. Labor Market Collapse

July 24, 2020

Media Continues to Misreport Unemployment: 31.8 Million People on State & Federal Unemployment Insurance. Week 18 of U.S. Labor Market Collapse

I get tired of reporters or bots who don’t read beyond the 2nd paragraph of Labor Department press releases. 2.35 million initial state and federal unemployment claims. PUA claims (gig workers) now 41% of total unemployment. 20% of labor force on unemployment insurance.

It just doesn’t let up. An astounding number of newly laid-off workers keeps filing for unemployment benefits week after week and pile on top of the people already unemployed. And the number of people who started working again isn’t big enough to make a visible dent in the curve.

In the week ended July 18, the total number of people who continued to claim unemployment compensation under all state and federal unemployment insurance programs, including gig workers and contract workers, edged down to 31.8 million (not seasonally adjusted), as reported by the Department of Labor this morning. It was the third highest level ever and just a tad off the peak:

Unabated lazy misreporting in the media.

If you read this morning or heard on the radio that 16.2 million people were claiming unemployment insurance – the “continued claims” – and you thought that there were only 16.2 million people who claimed unemployment benefits, you fell victim to lazy misreporting in the media, by reporters or bots that didn’t read the Labor Department’s press release beyond the second paragraph.

Those 16.2 million were only the claims under state programs, and do not include the claims under federal programs. All combined, there were 31.8 million people on the unemployment rolls. That’s what the Labor Department reported further down in the press release.

There is a huge difference between 16.2 million and 31.8 million unemployed people!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Blast Hits Power Plant In Central Iran Sunday As Mainstream Media Admits ‘It’s Likely Israel’

July 19, 2020

Blast Hits Power Plant In Central Iran Sunday As Mainstream Media Admits ‘It’s Likely Israel’

Yet another strange and unexplained explosion has rocked central Iran on Sunday, reports state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Citing no injuries during the large explosion, it occurred at a power station in the city of Islamabad, which is in the central province of Isfahan.

At this point, the spate of ‘mystery’ blasts and fires which has damaged key military, nuclear, and industrial sites across Iran – especially in and around Tehran – is approaching a dozen in only the past month.

A separate, prior explosion in Iran over the weekend.

Like with many of the prior incidents, many of which were deadly, Iranian officials downplayed that it was potentially Israeli or US-backed sabotage on its facilities, saying it was likely caused by the erosion of a transformer.

Separately on Sunday, cellophane factory in northwest Iran erupted in fire. Video and images showed a huge cloud of smoke billowing from the site through the day as firefighters struggled to put it out.

Iran’s civil defense organization chief, Ghulam Reza Jalali, was cited in state media as saying Iran is not ruling out sabotage on the power plant either by internal opposition groups or externally supported entities.

To review, all of this comes after earlier this month an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site was destroyed in a mysterious fire which is increasingly being blamed on Israeli or US intelligence:

A former official suggested the blaze could have been an attempt to sabotage work at the plant, which has been involved in activities that breach an international nuclear deal.
On 26 June, an explosion occurred east of Tehran near the Parchin military and weapons development base that the authorities said was caused by a leak in a gas storage facility in an area outside the base.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Covering the Julian Assange Story

June 14, 2020

Covering the Julian Assange Story

With corporate TV and press abandoning the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher, Consortium News has been in the forefront among alternative media in chronicling his plight. But we can’t do it without you.

Assange outside UK Supreme Court in 2011. (Flickr)

Except for a brief moment after his dramatic arrest, the mainstream media has abandoned Julian Assange. They do this at their own peril.

That’s because the arrest and espionage indictment of Assange for practicing journalism is a danger to all journalists everywhere.

Consortium News started covering the Assange case on Dec. 16, 2010 with an article by founding editor Robert Parry, one of the leading investigative reporters of his generation. Bob argued that Assange was practicing journalism in the exact way that he did. He wrote:

“… the process for reporters obtaining classified information about crimes of state most often involves a journalist persuading some government official to break the law either by turning over classified documents or at least by talking about the secret information. There is almost always some level of “conspiracy” between reporter and source.
Though some elements of this suspected Assange-Manning collaboration may be technically unique because of the Internet’s role – and that may be a relief to more traditional news organizations like the Times which has published some of the WikiLeaks documents – the underlying reality is that what WikiLeaks has done is essentially “the same wine” of investigative journalism in “a new bottle” of the Internet.
By shunning WikiLeaks as some deviant journalistic hybrid, mainstream U.S. news outlets may breathe easier now but may find themselves caught up in a new legal precedent that could be applied to them later.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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